To War
by witnesstoitall
Summary: War. We're going to war. The realization washed over her and threatened to spill out from behind her eyes. She only opened them when she heard his characteristically gruff voice from the top of the stairs. It was hard work being strong, but somehow she knew she'd manage. [Post 3x13] (Carol/Daryl teaser)


**Welcome to my very first TWD fic! This was inspired mostly by all the lovely gifs on tumblr of the groups reactions to Rick's declaration of war. Carol is one of my favorite characters for a multitude of reasons, and so I decided to explore her thoughts in that moment and the proceeding moments. I hope I've managed to do everyone's characterization and dialects justice. I hope you enjoy and would love to see what you think of this! Enjoy! xoxo **

_We're going to war. _

_War._

Rick's words rang cold and hollow in her head as she broke the trance-like stillness that had fallen over the group and made her way up to the second level to tend to the wailing cries of a babe too young to know the sort of world she'd been born into – or the sort of world she'd missed out on being a part of for that matter. The sound of her heavy boots on the metal stairs punctuated air, a resolute rhythm that reminded her she was in fact moving forward.

In the early days of the outbreak just before the media had succumbed, the reporters had often referred to it all as _the end of days_, claiming that the _end of the world_ was upon them at last. Carol remembered hearing their words as slowly, one by one the stations fell into black and grey static. She remembered the fear that threatened to consume her from the inside out, but the feeling she remembered best was that of relief. Perhaps this was her way out of it all. Clutching Sophia to her with one arm and propping the tattered pages of the New Testament open with the other, she had silently prayed for their quiet salvation as she read in a quavering voice.

"_Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come." _

Judith's wails subsided as Carol leaned over her makeshift bassinet and realized the scripture passage hadn't only been uttered in her memory. It had been a long while since she had regarded religion with anything more than jaded distrust, but somehow the words seemed to steady her shaking hands. Scooping the baby into her arms, she slowly swayed side to side, stealing a selfish moment to simply enjoy the precious gift she held bundled in her arms. She pressed a kiss into the soft wisps of dark hair that covered the infant's head, and gently wiped away the single tear that had slipped from her own cheek onto the girl's blissfully ignorant face.

"I'm sorry little one; you don't care much for war or walkers, do you? As long as you get to eat, right? You may give that brother of yours a run for his money someday." Balancing the girl in the crook of her elbow, she turned towards the row of neatly prepared bottles that she and Beth had fixed earlier that morning to help pass the time while Rick, Daryl and Hershel were negotiating with this _governor_ character.

As if response, Judith fisted her hands and gave a powerful kick. Her face was scrunched into a blotchy red smile of anticipation. Carol laid the tip of the bottle against the girl's lips and watched with pride as she greedily began suckling on its contents.

"Sorry it's cold, little one. We need to conserve the power in the generator – as if that means anything to you." She let a derisive laugh slip from her lips, and took a moment to straighten the girl's pink woven booties that Maggie and Daryl had brought back with them from their first run after her birth. "But you're tough, aren't you? You, little lady" – she affectionately tapped Judith on the nose – "were born that way. You don't mind cold formula or sleeping in a box. The rest of us, well, the rest of us have had to learn to be half as tough as you are."

"She's certainly a fighter – I never thought we'd see her through that first day."

Carol jumped at the sound of Hershel's voice. How had she not heard his crutches on the stairs? She chastised herself quietly for letting her guard slip. She knew they couldn't afford to let their guard down, especially now – not with the promise of war breathing down their backs. Pursing her lips and giving a nod in response, she passed the happily suckling bundle to Hershel who'd taken a seat next to the small table that served as the infant's nursery.

The veterinarian's drawn face and posture relaxed a bit as he watched the infant. Down below, the unmistakable sound of dissention – pointedly quiet mutterings followed by rattling cell doors – had broken out from the silence left in the wake of Rick's declaration.

"You were there –" Carol's voice faltered.

Hershel looked up from Judith's now nearly sleeping form and nodded. "I was," he said quietly.

"It's really going to come down to war, then? Quite a prize this all is." She gestured around her at the dirty walls still stained with blood and worse, at the rusted cell doors that creaked at night, and at the cold concrete ground they'd had to drag numerous walker-corpses over for burning.

The man didn't speak for a long moment, and she could almost see him considering his words carefully. "Seems that way," he said at last, as though there were nothing better to be said.

"When we first found this prison – that night we sat out in the yard with Beth and Maggie singing, and Lori sitting with Rick, and I don't know. There was just such a feeling of peace in the air. I really thought that this prison could be a home for us. And then after T-dog, Lori," her voice choked in her throat, "you'd think I'd have changed my mind about that, but I didn't. Not fully at least – but I've come to realize that this prison is only our home if we're here in it. Home is where the heart is, and these people are our family – even Merle and Michonne. No, our home can be wherever we all are – this prison is just a bunch of cement and metal meant keep the world at bay."

She turned from Hershel, unable to handle the blue insight that always seemed to twinkle just behind his eyes, and her hands came to rest on the doll that once belonged to her Sophia and had somehow come to find its place next to Judith in her mail bin.

Carol had lost her family once, and she'd be damned if she was going to go through that again.

"I think," she said, still not looking up from the ratty doll, "we should leave. Take our chances on the road. At least we'd be together. I'd rather gamble with the walkers out there than watch us die in these walls at the hands of _that_ man."

Hershel rose from his seat; Judith nestled in one arm and a crutch tightly gripped in the other, he placed the now-sleeping girl back into her bed. Pressing a kiss to his fingertips, he ghosted them over her forehead before turning towards Carol.

"I won't say that I wouldn't gladly take our chances on the road, but you are right about something else. This is our family. If war is where this is all heading, you better believe I'll be on that wall fighting for my girls, for Rick and his children, for you and Glenn and Daryl, even for Michonne and Merle. I've gained so much since I lost the farm, and I'll be damned if I'm going to lose that, too." He paused and brought a fatherly hand to lie on Carol's tense shoulder. "We have forty-eight hours before anything is certain, a lot can happen in that time. Now if you'll excuse me."

His hand slid down her arm and came to rest on her hand. He gave it a reassuring squeeze before shouldering his second crutch and clinking his way towards the stairs.

There were no drafts in the stronghold of the prison's cement walls, but Carol felt a chill snake its way around her. Pulling her sweater up onto her shoulders, she allowed Hershel's words to ruminate through her head. With Sophia long buried and dead even longer, this was her family now. Come war or whatever she was going to live with them or die beside them. Swallowing back the still-foreign taste of this deep-rooted strength, she inhaled and picked up her rifle from where it leaned against the corner of the table.

It was nearly time for her to take watch, and she needed to make sure Beth was nearby to watch Judith and prepare something for dinner.

~::~

The small tins of spam and cans of black-eyed peas that Beth had divvied out between the ten of them sat heavily in the pit of her stomach as she leant back against the metal step behind her.

This time last year, Carol never would have thought she'd miss having freshly killed squirrel to clean and prepare, but she did. They all did. Daryl hadn't been able to go out hunting since this mess with Woodberry had begun, and so meat, even the canned variety, had become a great luxury. Tonight's dinner had been intended as a special treat – Beth had thought they could use a proper dinner after the events of the day and opened what was very nearly the last of their canned spam.

Truth was, even if war never came, it wouldn't take much to starve them out of the prison.

A stirring within the crook of her elbow forced that grim thought from her mind, and she looked down. Judith was nestled there, happily gurgling as she finishing the last of her bottle. Carol inhaled slowly as wave of sorrowful peace washed over her and the sweet smell of powdered milk and baby wash filled her nose.

Throughout the cell block, the group had begun dispersing for the evening – wasn't much use in staying awake once night fell outside the barred windows. Sitting with the baby, she quietly watched as her family went through their nightly routines as if the declaration of imminent war hadn't been made only hours earlier. She watched as Merle spit onto the ground before disappeared into the darkness, all stiff lines and hardness muttering just beneath his breath; as Hershel pressed a kiss onto the top of Beth's head and settled down beside his youngest daughter to help finish rinsing the dishes; as Carl leant against the wall of his cell, his father's hat poised on his head and his pistol clutched in his small hands, the ghosts of childhood-past dancing behind his eyes; as Michonne stalked silently off into the night, katana in hand to join Rick outside for first watch; and as Glenn, just inside the door to his cell, pulled Maggie to himself, whispering into her ear before tipping his head skyward as if in silent prayer.

Carol shook herself and swallowed back the tears that had welled beneath her bottom eyelids as she watched the silent film in front of her. Without really thinking, she began humming softly, more to herself than to the small babe who had started whimpering and squirming in her arms.

"That song got any words?"

His voice, barely more than a whisper, alerted her to his presence standing behind her shoulder. She didn't bother admonishing herself for not hearing his approach as she had with Hershel earlier. The man's quiet footfalls had been learned, she was quite sure, from a lifetime of needing to pass by unnoticed, be it through the confines of his childhood home or through the great expanse of the wilderness.

Slowly, so as not to disturb Judith, she turned her head up towards him. A trace of a smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. "Not really a song, just something I made up when Sophia was small, I suppose. How long have you been standing there?"

He grunted, a half-smile playing at his own lips as she felt his eyes pass over her and Judith's peaceful form, and took a step forward, lowering himself down onto the stair next to her. "Long enough, I suppose. Little ass-kicker still got enough formula 'n shit? Don't know… when… we'll be able to make another run, if not."

Carol nodded, pretending not to notice the way he'd paused before saying the word _when_ and refusing to allow her mind to consider whether he'd really meant to say _if_ in its place. Brushing her hand over Judith's head, she instead allowed her mind to wander to the man sitting next to her, to wonder what he thought of this war. His face was so hard to read at the best of times, and ever since Rick's announcement he'd mostly adopted his tight jawed, narrow-eyed, predatory look he wore whenever his back was forced against a wall.

"We should be okay for another week or so, unless she hits a growth spurt."

Daryl pursed his lips and blinked his eyes. She wasn't sure if he actually nodded or if she'd just spent enough time around the man to know his mannerisms. Either way, she knew he had to be thinking the along the same lines as she was. A week – in this world, on this timeline – may as well be forever.

"Here," Carol said shifting her weight and handing Judith over to him before he had the opportunity to shirk the offer, "my arm fell asleep before she even started this bottle."

Free from the sleepy infant's weight she stretched her arm out and bent it at the elbow several times as blood flow returned to her finger tips with a tingling sensation. If Daryl was surprised at having an infant thrust into his arms, he didn't show it. Instead he seemed to settle under her tiny, bundled form with an almost natural grace. Carol averted her gaze when he looked up from his arms and she realized her eyes had lingered on him for a bit too long. It had been months since she'd bothered looking into a mirror, but she knew at that moment that her cheeks were a bright crimson color. She silently thanked the prison for its lack of proper lighting and hoped her blush had been hidden by the blue night.

When she glanced back up from her lap, her breath caught in her throat when she realized he was still looking at her with his clear blue eyes.

"I never said as much" – his voice cut through the weighty silence that had fallen between them, and Carol didn't know if she was imagining it or whether she could actually hear the slight tremble in his words – "but I'm glad I came back, too. You're right ya know? This is our home – you, Judith, Merle, Rick and Carl, Glenn, Hershel and the girls."

She felt as though the wind had been sucked from her lungs as she watched him stare out into the night, his words echoing in her ears.

"That's got to be something worth fightin' for, ain't it?"

Carol realized then that at some point during his speech her hand had reached across her and come to rest on his elbow – that her thumb had been stroking rhythmic paths across his arm as he spoke. "That is something worth fighting for," she choked out, at last.

He turned to look at her then, as if just realizing how close they were sitting, how intimate the pressure of her hand against his arm was, how much of himself he had just bared in his words, and before she could process what was happening, Judith was back in her arms and Daryl had risen to his feet and was retreating to the isolation of his bedroll.

Sighing, she looked down at the miraculously still-sleeping infant. Judith shifted in her sleep, struggling to stuff her tiny fingers into her mouth for comfort. Scrunching her eyes shut, Carol willed herself to find the strength she had felt earlier – the part of her willing to die for her family and their safety, but she just came up empty.

_War. _

_We're going to war. _

The realization washed over her and threatened to spill out from behind her eyes. She only opened them when she heard his characteristically gruff voice from the top of the stairs.

"You just watch out for ya'self in all of this, ya hear? Can't have Jude raisin' herself, now."

A small smile crept over her face at his words, and her silent tears ran down her face onto the sleeping infant. It was hard work being strong, but somehow she knew she'd manage.

Her family needed her, after all.


End file.
